who hears us when we wish?

[biomagnet]

WHO biomagnet and swatswithdragons.
WHAT Space and time are relative between dimensions. One minute in one world could be an entire month somewhere else. Sefton's grown up, and Lance is about to learn what happened in the interim.
WHERE Dr. Lowell's lab, then the Sevii Islands near the Kanto region.
WHEN 2054 for Sefton; 1999 for Lance.
NOTES We're silly. More crossover 'verses! Sefton is 26, Lance is 24.
WARNINGS So much fluff, you'll probably explode. Not get cavities. Explode.

The lab should have been silent. It was the dead of night, after all, when most of the sensible people had gone home to sleep. Sefton, too, would usually be among them. Instead, he had the CD player humming at quite the respectable volume while he tapped away at the computer in front of him, intent on the readings. It was fascinating. The lab had finally gotten permission to study one of the most mysterious infused artifacts humankind had ever known. The doorknob itself was nothing spectacular, having been made in the 1800s for a mansion somewhere in London. Its mystery was simple but confounding: marks like chickenscratch etched into the metal, humming every now and then with an indeterminable sort of energy. It sat innocently inside the observation booth, with a lead wrapped around the narrowest point to try and catch a reaction when it activated.

How could anyone leave when there was something like this to be studied? Excitement wasn't quite the word to describe how Sefton felt about the opportunity; interest and curiosity would fit better. His interest in infusion was intensely personal, after all, and his connection with the world's greatest puzzle gave him some sort of purpose. Without it, he would probably still be that terrified, isolated kid wandering the country.

Now, he was a frightened, lonely man with incurable wanderlust and government funding. The more things change, he mulled idly. He dragged himself out of the chair with a large yawn, moving to the other side of the room to retrieve the cup he had left there. His journey was halted when the knob began vibrating, its regular hum gearing up into a whine, and he darted back to the console. The readout was going insane, displaying more than Sefton could keep up with. Before he could make the judgment call on whether to retrieve someone else or observe the phenomenon while it happened, the air shifted, tore open, and swallowed him whole.

The sensation (floatingfalling) was brief. Sefton barely caught a glimpse of blackish creatures swimming through the colorful expanse of space before he was ejected quite rudely on the other side. He crashed into the sand below with a pained grunt, rolling onto his chest. Before he could register that it was suddenly day and outside and on a beach, the world twisted, turned, and faded away.

Comments

[swatswithdragons]

"It was an isitsubute," Lance repeated, this time with a grin. "They're mineral-based beings--living rocks. The Motherland is the only place in the world where they exist, unless they were taken or migrated elsewhere. But they came from here, in the beginning."

[biomagnet]

"Isi...tsubute," Sefton repeated slowly, carefully, swerving his attention back to the recently-settled geodude. The idea was fascinating (very little in Lance's world wasn't, it seemed) and he absolutely wanted to know more. "But how can rocks be alive? That's like—an oxymoron. Okay, not completely, but not like this."

[swatswithdragons]

"Not here," Lance said simply but obviously, still smiling. Frankly, hearing that the Outside didn't have these sorts of beings was a shock to most of the children who were born there. The redhead continued on along the path, but kept talking over his shoulder. "The parts of their body that correspond to organs are crystalline in nature--ever seen a crystal with a lot of internal fractures but remains structurally sound? Bio-electricity runs along those fractures and is transmitted between organs through salt deposits."

He took a breath, glancing back to make sure Sefton was following. "That's why water is poisonous to beings like Ptera--it erodes and dissolves the basis for which their physiology exists."

[biomagnet]

Sefton walked after Lance, attention lingering on the geodude until he realize he really should be looking where he was going. He turned forward reluctantly, incredibly thoughtful. "That's incredible. But... how—what about their brains? Muscles?" Surely those couldn't be crystalline, too...?

[swatswithdragons]

"Their brains are crystalline," Lance agreed, "if not completely. And the systems that correspond to organic musculature is difficult to describe if you're not already familiar with mineral beings. Plasma has a lot to do with it, though. It's what enables them to move on a more practical level. It's like a ..."

He pursed his lips, turning a little, half in thought and half toward Sefton. "I suppose it's sort of like a set of secondary nervous systems. They keep fluid the movements of the tiny crystalline structures that make up what to correspond to a single muscle."

[biomagnet]

"That's..." Sefton hesitated, realizing he was about to repeat himself, then found another word to use. "That's awesome." Though not exactly used in its modern context, it fit nonetheless. "Seriously, it is. Don't suppose there's a lotta reading material available on that kinda stuff?"

[swatswithdragons]

"Oh, there is," Lance said cheerfully, looking ahead and even smirking slightly with a momentary surge of mischief. "It's as researched as any other mainstream branch of science--it's a common field of biology, after all." And then he craned his head to glance over his shoulder, still grinning. "As long as you can read the mothertongue, anyway. There's never been any need for those kinds of texts to be translated into English."

It was true, but not complete. There were one or two texts which had been translated by very few English-speaking scientists--the ones who had come into the fold and learned enough of the mothertongue to bridge the divide. Most of the time they only focussed on the science, once they had the means to understand it. What was the point in translating something when it seemed unlikely it would ever reach the wider English-speaking scientific community?

[biomagnet]

Sefton scrutinized Lance's back, as if it would tell him just what sort of joke Lance was playing. Either way would be cruel; either he was yanking Sefton's chain and there really were books available in English, or... he was telling the truth and he would never be able to read up on something as intriguing as living rocks. Neither option was very amusing to him.

"Excuse me?" he asked, tone a mix between flat, incredulous, and disappointed.

[swatswithdragons]

Lance laughed at Sefton's tone of voice. He couldn't help it; maybe it was inappropriate, maybe it was dickish, but godsdammit, it was funny. He turned about on his heel so he could face Sefton and walk backward (easily dodging stones and pebbles with all the ease and grace of a man who was either psychic, poker-faced or simply knew the trail just that well).

"It's true," he said, his smile smaller now, part chagrined and part genuinely amused. "Most books here, unless they came in from the Outside, are in the mothertongue. Books that originated from here don't go beyond the borders, so there's no market for having them translated." Then he threw Sefton his bone. "But there has been one or two immigrant scientists who have translated books into English over the years. I don't know if any of them wrote anything on mineral beings, but we can look."

[biomagnet]

"That's not fair," Sefton retorted almost childishly, as if it were a personal affront that the books would not be available to him, as if they should have been translated anyway, just because. He huffed at Lance's obvious amusement with the situation. "Fine. You'll help me look for those."

[swatswithdragons]

Another grin and Lance turned back around with a chuckle. "Of course." It wouldn't be too difficult to find with his resources--it wasn't as if they were in high demand.

After that they fell silent again, and in time they would come over a ridge, dusty and tired, to see the bridge leading to the northern inhabited island below them, still a ways but looking close. It was framed by the sunlight sparkling off the water, seagull pokemon hovering around the coastline.

[biomagnet]

When they finally came to the ridge, Sefton paused at the idyllic scene of the bridge, the birds, the town and the enticingly reflected light. "If only I had my camera," he muttered to himself, earlier grievances set aside for now. Chivy would have loved a 'postcard' of something like that.

[swatswithdragons]

Lance dug in a side-pocket for his phone and held it out without looking over. It was an excellent phone, a high-quality one--good photography was one of its features. He needed it for his work, after all, and at discretion.

"It's nice," he agreed idly, "but not the best I've seen. Then again, I'm biased." He turned and swept and hand around at the mountains they'd just come from, framed by the endless blue sky above and lit gold and bright green by the sunlight on the stone and leaves. "I prefer that."

[biomagnet]

Sefton glanced over, then carefully plucked the phone from Lance's hand. Curiously, he turned it over a few times before beginning to carefully pick through the interface. "Oh, good," he said. "Don't suppose the e-mails here can puncture the dimensional divide?"

The mountainside was an incredible view, too. After some fiddling, Sefton managed to get decent pictures of both directions and shrugged, slight smile tugging at his lips. "That's not so bad, either."

[swatswithdragons]

"It can puncture the one in this Earth," Lance said dryly, his eyes scanning the ridge for the trail down as he unzipped another pocket and tugged out a cap. "Between yours and mine? Haven't the faintest."

He spotted the trail and pulled the cap on, low enough so that it shaded his eyes--had trouble hiding things in his eyes, always had--and tucking all his hair up under it. "Done?"

[biomagnet]

"Too bad," Sefton muttered to himself, checking over the pictures one last time to make sure they were satisfactory. It wouldn't do any harm to hang onto them and see if he couldn't take them back home with him, right? When he looked up to hand the phone back, he stopped mid-motion and did nothing to hide his confused look.

"Nice hat...?"

[swatswithdragons]

"I don't want anyone to recognise me," was Lance's simple answer as he took the phone, peering out at Sefton from under the brim of the cap. He scrolled briefly through the images, smiling his approval.

"I can get them printed--or move them to a portable drive. This phone takes good pictures." If Sefton could even take objects from this world back with him, that is, but it was worth a try.

[biomagnet]

"Why...?" Sefton asked, dragging the word out. Of course he remembered Lance's admission the day before (how could he forget?), but wasn't he some sort of police officer to boot? Then he shook his head. "Portable drive?"

[swatswithdragons]

"Small thing," Lance answered, a little amused, "tiny piece of technology used for transferring data between computers. And--" He waved a dismissive hand; dismissive because he was affecting it, not because he believed it. "Because if people recognise me, word will get around, they'll start wanting autographs and battles--it'll be a whole big deal. We don't have that kind of time to spare."

[biomagnet]

"Like a CD?" clarified Sefton. His look turned curious as he focused more on the second half of what Lance said: it was somehow the more interesting, even when introduced to some new type of technology. "Autographs and battles? If they recognize you? Lance, what—?"

It was all out of his depth, to be honest. Was it because Lance trained dragons? He remembered talk of them being rare, even in their 'natural habitat' of Lance's home world. Maybe that was why people would be excited to battle him. (Although he couldn't quite grasp the memory, the knowledge that 'battles' were more akin to a sport dredged itself up after a moment of consideration, which made the whole thing a little more sensible, at least.)

[swatswithdragons]

"CD?" Lance repeated blankly before it clicked. "Oh, those circular disks the Outside uses--compact discs? I guess. But they're smaller and not ... flat. More like crystals."

In point of fact, the first portable drives in existence had been a form of artificially-grown living stone. Hellishly expensive to fund and impossible to connect to a computer without a special interface, but that had been decades ago, and the Motherland had long since learned how to manufacture chips for the same purpose. They weren't compatible with Outsider technology, though, which was why some places were starting to develop similar machines, if only so agents going to the Outside knew what to use and how.

He totally ignored the second question, turning to move down the trail. "Come on. If we don't dawdle we may not have to make our own lunch."

[biomagnet]

"Crystals," Sefton muttered in confusion as he began to follow Lance. It wasn't beyond him that the other had completely dodged the other question, and he huffed. "Hey. Seriously, what?"

[swatswithdragons]

"What what?" Lance asked over his shoulder, without fully turning around. Had to watch the ground, on this trail. "It'll slow us up and make people ask questions about you. We really don't need either to be happening right now."

[biomagnet]

"How would you not having a hat slow us down is what," Sefton clarified grumpily. He, too, did not keep his attention focused solely on Lance, though he did occasionally give an irritated glance.

[swatswithdragons]

"Me not having a hat would draw attention the likes of which we don't need," Lance answered simply. "Good thing there isn't really a journalist outlet here--but it'd get to them anyway, somehow, and then I won't have a secret escape place, will I?"

Not to mention all the questions about the Outside, and why he wasn't back on duty, and how his training was going--because that's how Karen was selling his absence to the press. Training. Not health reasons. Health reasons would only make them wonder what.